Field Recordings welcomes Adam Gianforcaro to the internet wilds.n His newest book is available via Aldrich Press. As usual, links to his work is peppered throughout.
Name:
Adam Gianforcaro
Most recent title published:
Morning Time in the Household, Looking Out published through Aldrich Press.
Where do you write?
If poetry, I usually draft in my moleskin that I keep in my pocket or on my cellphone, then I revise and flesh it out later. If fiction, I usually write while lounging on the couch.
What are your rituals with regards to writing
I actually don’t have any rituals.
Describe your writing process:
1) Open laptop; 2) Write; 3) Revise; 4) Revise; 5) More revision; 6) Send it away; 7) Wish I revised more.
What do you when you begin to revise? What's the first thing you do during that process?
As soon as I finish my first draft, I automatically think that whatever slop I had written is the best piece I’ve ever created. Upon first read-through, though, I think just the opposite. Then, I go to town. I print out the piece and, also, have an electronic version up on my screen. I read through the physical sheet and destroy it with a red pen while I make clean changes in a word-processor.
When revising, how many drafts do you go through before you feel comfortable with the final product?
In poetry, I usually go through about 3 or 4 before I put it aside, because if I don’t put it aside, I will always feel that it could use more work. With fiction, I revise 5, 6, 7+ times.
When arranging lines for your poems, what do you consider at the micro level-- about the line?
It all depends, but I will not end a line with a conjunction or preposition.
As a poet, whose music, or voice, sometimes do you hear as you write or revise? When I write, I try to listen to a lot of instrumental music as to not get distracted with others’ words. My current favorites for writing are Toe and Mermonte.
How would you classify your poetry?
Realist free-verse with a hint of pessimism.
What poets are you currently reading?
This week, I read A Working Girl Can't Win by Deborah Garrison and Master of Disguises by Charles Simic.
What poets/poems do you strongly recommend a reader to discover?
Billy Collins, Charles Simic, and Charles Bukowski.
The contemporary American poetic tradition is elegy, do you discover elegiac qualities among your own writing as a whole? Are you a poet of loss?
In a sense, yes; death is the ultimate unknown and the most interesting concept to write about.
Where does your inspiration come from (music, film, other books)?
To give a simple answer, daily life.
What is your literary guilty pleasure?
I feel that poetry is my guilty pleasure... Is that bad?
Explain how your local and regional environment influences your writing, your process, and your product (in other words, how does your reality intersect with the worlds that you create?):
My local reality greatly influences my work. Many of my poems are loosely based on people I have met or experiences I have lived. Some poems are even about people I have only met once for a short amount of time.
You have to invite three authors to dinner, who are they? Why?
Paul Auster (my favorite novelist), Kurt Vonnegut (to pick his brain), and Billy Collins (my favorite poet),
Favorite title (you wish you had come up with):
Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit, by Charles Bukowski
Book you did not read in high school but now have read and have an appreciation for: And why:
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. It put me on a path to rejecting gender binary.
Favorite word:
Lapel
Least favorite words: Any racial, homophonic, or other ignorant rhetoric.
Advice you would like to pass on to other writers:
Revise, revise, revise, and befriend simultaneous submissions.
What you would discuss with your pet if your pet could talk:
Discuss the need for him to chill out when I’m trying to relax.
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